Becoming 'human performance' leaders
Juni Kuntari, Associate Partner, Accenture
Based on Accenture's survey on performance in the workforce most companies have a long way to go in addressing their workforce issues.
A large percentage of companies are struggling to understand how investments in human performance can best address the challenges they face - and how these investments can be linked to specific business outcomes.
In fact there is a stark contrast between how these organizations address their "people" issues and how they manage, invest in, and measure the performance of their physical assets.
In the survey, we found that a number of companies are ahead in addressing their human performance challenges. These 27 companies - dubbed "human performance leaders" - share a common characteristic that is absolutely critical to an organization's ability to lead the market.
That characteristic is essentially the deep understanding among employees of how their specific job, and actions, contribute to the company's achievement of its strategic priorities.
In the case of our human performance leaders, respondents from each company indicated that the vast majority of their employees - more than 75 percent - fully understand the connection between their jobs and the execution of corporate strategy.
In deeply analyzing our survey results, we found that these leaders were experiencing greater success than others (the "non- leaders") in creating and sustaining a high-performance workforce. These companies:
* Have a more highly skilled workforce. Over 60 percent of leaders said their employees exhibited superior skills to those of their competitors, compared with just 17 percent of non- leading companies.
* Have experienced greater success, with their training initiatives geared toward strengthening key workforce skills, just over 40 percent of leaders reported being 'very satisfied' with these initiatives, versus 11 percent of non-leaders. Furthermore, the mean overall satisfaction rating for training initiatives among leaders was 4.3, versus 3.6 for non-leaders (on a scale where 1 = very dissatisfied and 5 = very satisfied)
* Are more satisfied that their training and development organization was providing timely, relevant and cost-effective services for employees. Leaders' average satisfaction rating was 4.0, versus 3.5 for non-leaders.
* Are making excellent progress on key human resources initiatives. Leaders average satisfaction rating for human resources initiatives was 4.4, versus 3.6 among non-leaders. Nearly 50 percent of the leaders were reportedly 'very satisfied', compared with 8 percent of non-leaders.
* Are more satisfied with the overall performance of their human resources function. Leader's average satisfaction rating for their human resources function's performance was 4.1, versus 3.6 among non-leaders.
Clearly these companies are doing something different from than the rest of the companies in the survey. Their actions, we believe, can provide other companies with valuable guidance in their efforts to create and sustain a high performance workforce.
In the next and last part of the series on high performance work, we will focus on how these human performance leaders view human resources, their strategic approach to the workforce, effective measurement, technology usage and alignment with customers -- all factors that have brought them success.